Prepare sauce: in a small bowl, combine the wine, honey, and soy sauce.

Cook: combine brussels, sauce, and water in a 3-quart saucepan. Cook, covered, at a gentle simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover and cook, stirring occasionally, for another 10 minutes.

Finish: dissolve the cornstarch in a small amount of water. Stir into the saucepan quickly and cook for another 5 minutes.

November 22, 2009

More Jewelry in November!

I went to the international gem and bead show in Seattle this weekend, and exchanged many hours worth of money for many hours worth of beads!Some of the beads: agate, unpolished agate, fire agate, wonder agate, onyx, freshwater pearl coins and sticks, brass spacers and chain, turquoise, crystal, geodes, etc.

November 8, 2009

Productive Weekend

I also polished my black shoes - man, I forgot how much work polishing is!

My parents were up to deliver me stuff, meaning I had to reorganize all my art stuff, kitchen stuff, books, etc! I acquired a bookshelf, which makes our living room look exponentially nicer (not exactly a feat considering the cardboard box table).

Also, we were leaving my aunt and uncle's house and spotted a garage sale - they had a great new dresser we picked up. The mirror is from a different garage sale over the summer - it was $5 so I couldn't resist, although I had nowhere to put it. It's non-functional atop the dresser, but at least it looks pretty ;D

November 5, 2009

CSA Review

The idea of CSAs (community supported agriculture) has intrigued me since I heard about in college, but they always seemed to come in 4-person or 2-person shares, which I didn't need. But now I have someone to share with, I finally got to try one!

After MUCH hemming and hawing, I decided on Boistfort Valley Farm, which has a delivery site in Kirkland only a fifteen minute round trip away. Why I picked them:

it cost ~22 bucks a week for the whole summer all the way through October, and

the variety of food they offered sounded delectable and delicious.

Our final delivery was last week, and now I'm trying to decide whether to buy a winter share.

Overall I loved having the CSA! I pretty much stopped grocery shopping, only going for pasta, dairy, and baking supplies, yet we were always inundated with food! We always got way more than we could eat, and I felt bad letting stuff go bad in the fridge when I didn't get around to cooking it. Each week was different so I didn’t wind up making the same things all the time. It was fun to try stuff I hadn’t tried before - garlic scapes (thumbs WAY up!), celery root (thumbs down), random asian greens (shrug), etc. An added bonus was the farm included recipes each week, which all sounded delicious - and all the ones that I made were! I couldn't get enough of the peas or the scapes, and the carrots were the best I've ever had. It was amazing to make whole meals - stews, pasta sauce, salad, etc - all from the freshest ingredients.

There were some drawbacks too though:

no choice in what we got, so we got some stuff I know I don't like (chard, celery, fennel bulbs) - although I did re-try some things (Note: even peanut sauce does not make chard edible)

no choice in what we got, so I couldn't get more of the stuff I loved

no choice, so we doubled up with our own garden. This turned out to only be an issue with tomatoes due to our slacking garden skillzorz, nothing a little pico de gallo won't fix ;D

we didn't know what we'd get each week, making planning a challenge

made it so I didn't need to go to farmer's markets ever :'(

got too many of some stuff (zukes, cucumbers (uh, how much tzatziki can I eat?), radishes, green beans by the end)

flowers were included - CJ would have rather'd more food, though we already had too much! (The lily's exacerbated his allergies)

I wanted more fruit, cuz the fruit we did get was SO GOOD! I've never really liked nectarines, but I made a stupendous cobbler and wanted more!

All in all, though, awesome. I think I'll do it again next summer. I'm not sure I need that many root veggies though to warrant the winter share...